Dicker abandons Cuomo

2/11/13 12:31 PM EST

Fred Dicker, the so-called "Dean" of the Albany press corps, has long been an ally to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He's had the governor on his radio show frequently for friendly Q-and-A's and written favorably about him in his column for the New York Post.

But things have changed of late.

In his latest column, Dicker suggests Cuomo is "'adrift' on a course of murky proposals, frequent indecision, and political obsessions focused on re-election next year and the presidency in 2016." This comes just weeks after Dicker disparaged Cuomo's gun control package on his radio show.

Cuomo "has become so obsessed with maintaining what until recently were record-high job-approval ratings that he has refused, for fear of alienating politically potent liberal voting blocs, to make tough decisions to cut costs for fiscally troubled local governments, reduce regulations to attract businesses, and approve hydrofracking for natural gas," Dicker writes today.

Reached for comment, Dicker told POLITICO he would let the piece speak for itself. But asked if he believed he had departed from his pro-Cuomo stance, Dicker rejected the notion he was a Cuomo friendly in the first place.

"That characterization, which I've heard at times over many years, has always been false and has usually been made by people who didn't know me," he said. "Whether it was my coverage of Hugh Carey, Mario Cuomo, George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson or Andrew Cuomo, I've written what I believed to be the truth, good and bad, about their policies and their motivations."